CAP Head Mod

Well, after 72 hours of voting, we have decided as a community on our concept for CAP 5! Thanks again to all who participated; we really did have some phenomenal concepts. Let's check out what the winning concept is:

Description: A pokemon whose presence in the metagame increases the usage of one or more underused types and simultaneously decreases the usage of one or more overused types.

Justification: Take a look at the OU usage statistics for January and you'll see that 9 out of the top 10 pokemon have either steel, water, dragon or fighting as one of their types, and extending it to the top 20 shows 16/20 with those types. We should also be asking ourselves why these trends exist so strongly and what can be done about them. In creating this CAP, we'd have to discuss in depth many different aspects of what makes a type and opinions can ultimately being tested in the playtest.

Questions To Be Answered:

Is a types usefulness relative to the metagame or is it intrinsic? (Ie. Can any type be the "best" type given the right circumstances or do type match-ups, available STAB moves etc mean some types will always be better than others?)

What exploitable weaknesses do "good" types in OU have? Are their currently pokemon that can exploit them and if so, how do they function differently to CAP5?

How (if at all) will the targeted types adapt to the situation created? Will people choose different movesets, abilities, etc or will they just use them more/less? How is this linked to the way CAP5 functions strategically?

What effects will the changes on certain types' presence have on the metagame?

Which members of the targeted types will benefit and suffer from this most and why?

By creating CAP5, have we learnt any new ways to counter good types or use bad types?

Explanation:
Types have many complex interactions to explore - not just with one another but with abilities (eg, Magnet Pull, Water Absorb), moves and field effects (rain, Stealth Rock, etc), and sometimes even trends in the pokemon with the type. What I'm trying to present is a clear destination whose journey leads to good discussion and analysis of a large aspect of pokemon, whilst still being enjoyable. I feel one of the main strengths of the concept is that it has a wide variety of potential implementations which will help to promote discussion and creativity. The idea of a "bad" or a "good" type is rife throughout all areas of competitive pokemon, with CAP being no exception, so it seems valid to explore it.

A lot of people have asked how I envision this working. The short answer is it depends on which types we decide to take down and up. However, some general ideas can still be given:
Obviously we would want CAP5 to have the right type match ups for the concept. Resistances or immunities to the types we want to take down and weaknesses to those we want to bring up are ideal but not mandatory. Immunity granting abilities are a valid option to patch up not-so-ideal type match-ups later down the line. Between the two, we'd probably be hoping to make moves of certain types less spammable.
Statwise, the build very much depends on what we're targeting as well as the previous steps, so it's difficult to say much. I would suggest decent special defense to prevent people utilising hidden power rather than pokemon of our "bad" types, but that's not a necessity.
Choosing to target certain types might require CAP5 to have specific aspects: for example if we try to bring down water then an anti-rain element would be worth considering and if we're trying to bring up a stealth rock weak type then looking into anti-hazard methods would be a valid option.
Obviously, we should be mindful of specific threats of the targeted type(s) throughout, but we tend to do that well anyway.

Note that I haven't specified how many types we should target. This is really important. One of the big learning opportunities will be when we decide how ambitious we think we can be, as this will provoke discussion on just how firm type dominance is and contribute a lot to answering my first question in particular. I don't want that to be missed because I've said "we should focus on X number of types". That's for the community to decide.

This concept shares some similarities with Mollux in that they both try to make "bad" typings "good". However, the learning opportunities of Mollux were very much focused on the build of a pokemon itself, opting to alleviate typing's weaknesses by combinations of ability and movepool. I'm trying to look more on typing in relation to the build of the metagame and and what new opportunities existing pokemon will have in the modified metagame, without the presence of certain types.

Click to expand...

There's obviously going to be a lot to discuss here. This thread will remain locked until jas61292 has written his opening statement for this thread. Until then, sit tight and give the concept another read through to make sure we're all on the same page here.

EDIT: Alright, I had to go through this thread and do a significant amount of clean up. There's two points that I want to emphasize for the betterment of this thread:

1) jas61292 is our Topic Leader; read his posts. If you don't know who he is, he's the guy with the Quilava avatar. It's his job to make sure that this thread is flowing in a focused manner that will give us some meaning out of our concept. His posts in this thread have been phenomenal, and I feel that they have been largely ignored by posters. Read his posts and respond to them, please. Quote them, tear them apart, do what you will with them, but it is his posts that matter most here. They are a goldmine of information; don't let them go to waste.

2) Do not poll jump. I know that many of you posting here are newer to CAP, and that's awesome! However, poll jumping is a serious offense in these threads, and you can get infracted for it. If you didn't know, poll jumping is when you discuss something that's WAY in the future, like specifying CAP5's stats or typing. You're allowed to do a little of this to conclude a point or provide an example, but do not centralize your post on a poll jump. The reason we moderate poll jumping is because if we allowed it, these threads would fall to pieces with everyone going off on tangents. If you're not sure if you're poll jumping or not, err on the side of caution and don't post it.

If you have any questions, you can always send me a message on the forums; I'd love to add clarification~

Moderator

For this concept assessment, while I hope to address multiple questions that will guide the process going forward, my overall goal is to get everyone on the same page. Many of the problems in previous projects have arisen from people having left this stage each with their own interpretations of the concept.

Anyways, before I even get into the questions, there is one common misconception that I have noticed people spreading regarding this concept that I want to clear up right away: While we are trying to increase the presence of underused types and decrease the presence of overused types, this does not mean we are necessarily making a Pokémon of an underused type. We want to increase the usage of a given type as a whole, and simply increasing it because CAP 5 is that type and is getting a lot of use is avoiding the true purpose of the concept. That is not to say we cannot be of a lesser used type, but we should not be confusing this with something like Mollux’s concept were we were specifically required to do so. With that said, let me get right to some of the things I’d like to discuss here.

What types are common in the current metagame? Why?

The first part of this question is fairly simple. As stated right in the concept itself, certain types (Dragon, Fighting, Steel, and Water) are incredibly common. However, I want to go into more detail than that. Are these types that are most common actually the best? If so, what exactly causes these types to dominate? Is there something about then that makes them intrinsically the best, or is there some other reason why they are so common? Are there types that are naturally good that are not so common?

What shortcomings do common types have?

The goal of our concept involves reducing the usage of one or more common types, so if we are to do that, we need to know what problems these types have. Now I am not looking for specifics such as “Dragon can’t hit Steel.” What I want to see are more general ideas of ways that a specific Pokémon could take advantage of a type. Do the members of a type all follow a specific, exploitable mold? Do they all rely on the same coverage moves? Follow similar strategies?

What types are uncommon in the current metagame? Why?

This is almost the polar opposite of the first question, but analyzing it takes a different approach. Sure, certain Pokémon types are less common than others, but is this because of strict inferiority, or is it due to a simple lack of quality Pokémon? Ice and Poison, for example, have little representation in OU, but function very differently as typings. Is there some trait they share that makes them both undesirable, or are the reasons unique?

What positive features do these underused types possess?

Since our other goal is to increase the usage of one or more uncommon types, we also need to know what exactly these types have going for them. We all can read the type charts and know of things like the convenient resistances Poison has, but what beyond things like this do these types possess that could be valuable in the current OU metagame?

What existing Pokémon individually affect the usage of entire types?

It is certainly hard for a single Pokémon to have effects throughout the entire metagame, but we know that Pokémon like this exist. One of the most obvious examples of this would be Scizor, who’s Bullet Punch is so threatening than anything weak to it must have a lot going for it outside of just typing if it wants to remain in the tier. What other Pokémon are there like this? Are there any Pokémon out there that increase the usage of a given type, other than their own, simply due to their existence?

What ways are there to change a typing’s usage outside of simply countering/being countered by them?

This is probably the most abstract question of the bunch. While it is obvious that you could decrease the usage of Water-types by making a Pokémon designed to perfectly counter Politoed, Keldeo, and the other top water types, are there other ways to accomplish this goal? Beating a support partner they rely on? Aiding an opposing team style? Inversely, how can you increase a type’s usage other than simply making an incredibly good Pokémon that can only be hard walled by that type? Can you increase use by targeting their counters? Or by aiding a team style that requires them?

Finally, what elements of a Pokémon are most important when dictating how it interacts with other types?

Obviously, your own typing is incredibly important, as it determines weaknesses and resistances, but is it the most important? Abilities can add immunities or resistances. Stats can cause Pokémon that would not normally care base on typing alone to fear you. And, of course, movepool determines what types you can actually threaten in return. But which of these is the biggest factor? There are two ways I would like to look at this: 1) Which is most important in a matchup against any one given type, and 2) Which is most important in matchups across the entire spectrum of types? Is there even a difference?

I don’t want to have too many questions here, so that is where I am going to leave it off for now. I’ll likely be adding more questions for us to answer a bit later on once we start to answer these. But for now, let’s just get things started.

I personally think that due to Dragon and Steel being joined at the hip (you can't make one worse without improving the other), we should focus on countering Water and Fighting-types instead. This will save us no end of drama and complaining and we might even make a good Pokémon out of it.

In the end, Dragons are popular because Dragon... Steels because Dragons are popular. Water due to rain being rain. And Fighting because general goodstuff.

It's a lot to try to affect at once, which is why I didn't like the concept. I'm hoping we can zero in on some achievable goals. As a whole, this is too big.

Normally, I'd say to focus on some sort of shared weakness, but these four types share no type weaknesses. Instead, I think a focus on play style weaknesses is more appropriate. Typing alone fixes nothing. Mamoswine for example is incredibly anti-meta yet dragons and steels still dominate.

In some ways the best option against all of these "types" already exists in the form of Jellicent, which beats many of the OU threats of these types. And again, that has affected nothing in terms of overall usage. So what is the flaw with having the typing/STABs necessary to be anti-meta? What else is needed?

I think the right way to approaching this concept is a deeper understanding of why these types dominate and under what play styles. Then we can invent a counter-reason against using one or more of those.

The Ice-type is the only STAB that can hit Dragons super-effectively, however in the current OU tier, only three Pokemon have an Ice typing. This results in the popularity of Dragons. It's not difficult to see why Ice-types are so uncommon, for one, the SR weakness, and secondly, an annoying weakness to another common type, fighting. For example, Weavile, an OU staple in the previous generation, has had it's use severely limited despite its amazing offensive stats. Due to the influx in Fighting-types and also the Stealth Rock craze, Weavile has dropped to UU. So many other OU staples in past generations with an Ice typing have fallen since the introduction of SR: from Abomasnow to Froslass. Their stat spreads do not help either; many Ice-types are given little bulk to help tank hits thrown at them, limiting their use. Could we solve the Ice-type problem to limit the use of Dragons? Could limiting the use of Dragons also in turn affect the usage of Steels?

Water-types... Not only do they abuse rain best, they also have very few weaknesses (Grass and Electric) and have amazing coverage options (many get Ice Beam + Hidden Power). Thats why they are so common. I'm not too sure how to solve this yet though. As for Fighing, it does help that one of their two weaknesses, the Flying-type is weak to SR.

SR seems to be a recurring theme in this, limiting the use of the checks to Dragons and Fightings.

Edit: I guess it's probably worth mentioning how Chlorophyll sweepers are huge checks to Drizzle teams and thus Water-types in general, especially with no more Tornadus-T.

Edit 2: I think I'd better place emphasis on the fact that Ice-types aren't bulky in general, and Mamoswine and Kyurem-B are the bulkier of the Ice-types; probably it's the reason why they're OU. Flying-types don't last very long either: you see Tornadus-I and Staraptor dropping below OU because of their fraility, even though their movepool and abilities are amazing enough to justify a place in OU alone. Their weakness to SR seems to be the nail in the coffin.

I'd just like to start by thanking everyone that helped my concept win, particularly those who helped me refine it in the submission stage. It's a huge privilege for me to have a winning concept so early on in my CAP career.

Jas really gets this concept and I have little to add to his assessment questions. I would, however, like to point out that we should have some idea of which types and how many types we'd like to effect by the end of the concept discussion.

Now then, down to business.
I'm starting with dragons. Superb coverage, generally high base stats, few weaknesses and a STAB resisted by only one singular type, it's no wonder dragons do well. With the metagame unfriendly to ice types (for reasons which I'll discuss later) the only solution to countering them is the steel type.
And there you have our reason for steel's high usage. An already good typing with loads of resistances becomes almost a necessity because of dragon's presence in the game. That's why I think these two are an easy pair to take down.
My current chain of logic is: remove the dragon threat, people no longer need to use steels so much, and with that, types that steel resist (generally "bad" types) get some breathing room, making raising them easier. The question is, how do we kill a dragon? Especially given that using steel would be counter-intuitive.

In response to a few comments so far:
nyttyn, you have some good ideas for the grass type, should we chose to raise it. I like how the three problems you've listed for grass are all steel type - that'll help the concept. However, you seem to have two separate arguments here: one for grass being raised and the other for CAP5 being a grass type. Both are logically sound, but I don't think the two can be linked - if it's a grass type that deals so well against waters, yes it gets some type lowering done, but it'll likely out compete many other grass types in OU and prove detrimental to raising the type.

scorpdesteroyer, as you point out entry hazards play a fair part in making types like ice "bad". But what would you do about them? A valid way of dealing with them (without turning CAP5 into a purely anti-hazard pokemon) would be quite useful.

Edit: Is it also possible to obtain type usage by percentage from the January stats? That would probably help the discussion.

Dragons, Fighting, Steels and Water. Standard answer. When we look at the first two types, we can see that Pokemons of those types have incredible coverage, wide distribution of powerful moves, and impressive stats to boot. Latios and Infernape are prime examples of these 2 - BAP 100+ Dragon-STABs are resisted only by Steel, which is then checked by a 120 BAP Close Combat. Yet Steel continue to carve its niche because of good defensive coverage - who wouldn't pack a wall if it has 11 resistances, 1 immunity with that Steel-typing alone? Water-types, however, have a more specified niche, imo - they're here due to the overwhelming presence of Rain, which strengthens them alongside their abilities that abuse the Drizzle (think along the lines of Hydration Tank Vaporeon, for example).

Amongst the common types in OU, the only shortcoming that is absolutely obvious would be the inability to function outside of their niches. Dragon and Fighting types are incredible offensive cannons, but when it comes to defenses, they can be outclassed by most other top-tier (or even average) types - Steels on the other hand, rely on a combination of abilities and stats to be able to work offensively (read: Scizor).

Poison and Ice are the typings that immediately come to mind when we read "uncommon". The reason for that, I think, is pretty simple - they are outclassed by other types, to the point that Pokemons of these types require immensely fortuitous combinations of stats, movepool, etc. to be able to have a place in OU usage (see Mamoswine and Toxicroak). Ice is an offensive typing by name of "Dragon Killer", yet it has absolutely terribly defenses type-wise and let's face it, Halley comet will hit the Earth by the time we have Ice-types that can dominate over Dragon-types stat-wise. Same goes for Poison - Steel outclasses it on every turn defensively, and it only hits Grass for SE when it comes to offense - it sucks, singularly.

Yet these uncommon types share a common redeeming feature - given enough breathing room, they can carve a niche of their own. It is not without reason that I mentioned Croak and Mamo - their primary typings are terrible, but they still see usage because their combinations allow them to fulfil their very niche.

I don't think that we can really dethrone dragons and steels as the kings of OU. Dragon is hands down the best typing in the game, even on paper. It sports useful resists and itself is only resisted by one type,steels. Combine this with the fact that every one of them is a 600 base stat behemoth and it is pretty obvious why they run OU.

Now, the single best way to handle these dragons is steel types, and that is because they can actually take a dragon type attack. Ice types, with or without SR, just cant come in repeatedly on Outrages. At most they can attempt a revenge kill, but i think weavile has that niche on lockdown. If we want to remove dragons from the limelight, our pokemon must be a steel type, but i don"t really know how another steel type can successfully popularize a lesser used typing when the other dozen steel types have failed to do so.

On a different note, i think one thing that we need to consider while deciding which type to raise up is which individual pokemon are we planning on raising up. For example, we may find a hundred good things about bug typing, but at the end of the day, most bug type pokemon kinda suck. Almost all of them are saved by their second typing (think scizor, heracross), and i really don't really see a way to bring things like Garvantula up to an OU level even if we create a pokemon that instantly removes stealth rocks on entry. This is also my main problem with trying to save grass typing: the only grass pokemon that are really OU viable on a macroscopic scale are Shaymin, Roserade, and Virizion, and even there Shaymin is a stretch. I really think we need to take a hard look at the pokemon we are trying to lift up instead of just talking about typings in general.

Now, in my opinion,i think our best bet would be try to nuetar fighting types and lift up dark types. I think the main thing fighting types have going for them is that they can bash the shit out of the main defensive typing (steel) and there really aren't too many OU mons designed to take strong physical fighting attacks (most paychics ar e more specially defensive). I think if we make a physically bulky mon that can stomach fighting blows, i think we can bring the fighting type down a notch. Plus, if we manage to reign in the fighting parade, there are a plenty of dark types just one tier down itching for a shot at OU. Things like Sharpedo, Honchkrow, Scrafty, and Weavile come to mind immediately, but things like Bisharp and Krookadile may also see the light of day. . Even within OU, Hydreigon may see a sizeable boost in usage if it doesnt have to duck around close combats all the time. Dark typing would be a fine choice for this concept.

Absolute minimum usage of all types, based on the pokemon of that type that has the highest usage, using weighted averages. These numbers are probably innaccurate, but for the moment they are the closest we have to type representation in OU, and are the very least a pokemon has, representation wise, in OU.

Steel: 19.823% of all teams have at least one steel type.
Water: 21.158% of all teams have at least one water type.
Grass: 19.269% of all teams have at least one grass type.
Psychic: 14.280% of all teams have at least one psychic type.
Dragon: 15.476% of all teams have at least one dragon type.
Electric: 12.748% of all teams have at least one electric type.
Dark: 13.379% of all teams have at least one dark type.
Rock: 13.379% of all teams have at least one rock type.
Fighting: 12.348% of all teams have at least one fighting type
Ground: 10.135% of all teams have at least one ground type.
Ghost: 10.993% of all teams have at least one ghost type.
Poison: 10.993% of all teams have at least one poison type.
Flying: 15.476% of all teams have at least one flying type.
Fire: 13.714% of all teams have at least one fire type.
Bug: 19.823% of all teams have at least one bug type.
Ice: 6.319% of all teams have at least one ice type.

Edit: I am aware the is inaccurate, but this is pretty much the closest we can get without Zarel chiming in with stats. Just consider it the "Absolute minimum usage" each type has in theory. In reality the usage stat for any given type is definitely higher, but this is the absolute minimum chance for a specific type to be on a specific team.

I feel that we should emphasize more on making a type or two less common than making less-used typings more common. That way we don't get caught up in the mess of "yes, it stops dragon and fighting-types but it makes steel-types better WE CAN'T DO THIS!!!"

I also agree with SgtWoodsy, Fighting and Water seem like good typings to work with.

Little Cup Co-Leader

Water is quite clearly obvious as a great type due to Drizzle which gives many of them a STAB boost. Rain is a very dominant weather and it doesn't help that the other two good weathers have Ninetales, Tyranitar and Hippowdon to set up which all have an inherent weakness to Water. Hail, however, uses Abomasnow which has a natural advantage over Politoed because of the grass typing but hail is a lot less useful against other things so it doesn't get used that much.

What I'm trying to say that the best way to nerf water types would be to nerf drizzle. And building an ice type mon that could beat common rain teams could boost the usage of hail which would automatically lower the usage of rain. Conveniently, Ice hits all Dragons but Kyurem super effectively and many of them for 4x effectiveness. So surely one of the best ways to nerf Water and Dragon, if we were to focus on them, is to build a Hail abusing Ice type.

Of course Water has a natural resistance to ice so maybe we'd need a secondary type or ability like water absorb (maybe even swift swim-but not crappy like beartic) to help beat rain teams. I'm sure there are many other ways that could be thought up to beat rain.

I didn't mean to jump onto the 'build a cool hailmon' bandwagon that I see many new posters wishing for, but it is undeniable that weather has a massive effect on the dominance of water types and it seems that this would be a great way to combat them. It is hard to make a metagame shift, which this concept seems to aim to achieve, without mentioning the dominance of weather in the metagame.

EDIT: although I do agree with the fact that we need to decide on the types we want to nerf as we can't possibly create somthing which beats Steel, Dragon, Water and Fighting. If it were up to me I'd pick Water and Dragon which is what I've posted about. Another interesting one to focus on would be both Steel and Dragon. This would be extremely hard as pretty much anything that can hit Dragons with Super Effective STAB are beaten by Steels. So I think that would be a more challenging route to go down.

Something that needs to be determined is are we okay with creating a mon that achieves the goal of increasing usage of some uncommon types and decreases the usage of some common types but ALSO increases the usage of a common type as well?

I can see ways in which we might bring down the usage of Steel + Water but doing so would likely increase the usage of Dragon.

It seems to me that the most important thing in this thread should be which types to go after. Now, I'm not the type to wimp out and pick the easy option. I actually want to fulfil the concept by going after the most common types, rather than just the ones that are easy to neuter.

This is why I really think Fighting is the wrong choice to go after, unless we get super ambitious and bend the rules by trying to neuter 4 types. Fighting strikes me largely as a response to steel, which is perhaps the most ridiculously overpowered type in the game (no, not dragon!). Usually, when I put a fighting type on a team, it's because I'm using rain and I think, "oh shit, how on earth am I going to kill ferrothorn?" (well, before keldeo anyway). When I look at the top three fighting types in OU, I see Breloom - a pokemon that's defined by spore and technician (and poison heal I suppose), mostly rather than its typing. Keldeo is defined far more by its water typing rather than its fighting typing - secret sword is basically a coverage move, while its hydro pump decimates everything. Terrakion and Keldeo both have stunning stats. And apart from anything else, they just aren't nearly as common as water or steel types. Just take a look at the stats. There are 4 steels in the top 6. That's no response to dragons; that's because they resist freaking everything. Seeing politoed at no.1 (edit: now no.2) is enough to make me go after water; the primary advantage of rain is to boost STAB water-type moves (the fact that there are several good choices prevents them from reaching the top few, but there are many spread throughout the tier). Dragon would probably be my third choice; I do worry slightly that we can't check them adequately without using a steel type (which would be awful), although I'm sure there's a way - dragons do all share a weakness to dragon after all - is there a way to persuade our CAP to use a non-STAB dragon move? Alternatively, most of them are weak to ice (and kyurems don't need neutering because they're ice types).

As for the lesser used types, this could be really, really difficult. I really have no idea how to go about being "countered" by ice types or poison types or whatever. The former lacks any resistances (well except ice) while the latter almost never uses its STAB. Perhaps it would be better to use the really uncommon types, and to be countered by somewhat uncommon types? I know I said I was ambitious, but this part of the concept is where the challenge truly lies.

@nyttyn: so you only included the single highest pokemon of each type? That's not a good estimate at all, sorry. Glad to see fighting so far down though lol. I was thinking of putting together something like that covering all OU pokemon (just summing the usage), but I probably won't have time for at least a day.

Absolute minimum usage of all types, based on the pokemon of that type that has the highest usage, using weighted averages. These numbers are probably innaccurate, but for the moment they are the closest we have to type representation in OU, and are the very least a pokemon has, representation wise, in OU.

Normal is probably so unpopular, it didn't even make it on the list! Anyways, to my point, I believe we should make, if we decide to help the lesser types, to help the Normal and/or Ice types more relevant in the metagame. They are both extremely scarce due to horrible attacking prowess and horrible defending prowess respectively. So,etching to fix that would extremely help both types.

On the countering subject, I believe the general consensus of Fighting, Dragon, Water to be a good place to start. Rain is in total domination of the earth and dragon and fighting both are extremely strong offensive types with strong moves given to strong pokemon which logically makes all three high usage. If we should counter or lower any type usage it should be one to all of these common types.

There's really a lot to talk about here, and rather than harp on any one point, I'm going to bring up the ones that are most prevalent in my mind:

Stealth Rock: SR in the metagame is a huge factor in what typings are defensively good and bad. Fire, Bug, and Ice are all commonly thought to be awful defensive typing, and all are weak to SR (Flying is at least immune to Spikes). Steel and Fighting are great defensive typings and both resist SR. If CAP 5 can spin or magic bounce rocks away it'll do a lot to help equalize defensive typing even when it isn't on the battlefield. A fast taunt to stop SR in an "anti-lead" role with no SR itself might also be helpful. Conversely if it lays SR or is a spin-blocking ghost type it'll contribute more to the problem.

Physical Defense: Steels soak Dragon Outrages, and Fighting Close Combats menace Steels. I think a strong physically defensive pokemon which is weak to neither Dragon nor Fighting would both lessen the need for Steel types while not reinforcing Fighting types. Ideally, this pokemon would not be one of the "strong" types itself. Since we don't want to use Steels here, we need either a lot of physical defense indeed, or outside the box solutions like Unaware or Prankster WoW.

Trapping: Trapping in general is a great way to have a disproportionate effect on the metagame compared to a pokemon's individual usage. Steels become much less useful in a defensive core if they're trappable. Rain and Waters will drop in usage if trapping Politoed (and other bulky waters) becomes practical. If an SR pokemon can be taunted and trapped in a lead matchup, rocks might never hit the field to menace "weak" defensive types.

We definitely don't have to squeeze all these ideas onto CAP 5, but I think they're all important things to consider.

Think of a type with no obviously outstanding traits and legions of mediocre members. Imagine there was a type so overlooked and underused, no CAP had ever been designated it before and only one OU Pokemon belongs to it, despite it being the second most common type in the game. Normal not only practically defines "underused", it is the purest slate possible for us to create this concept, perhaps especially if Normal is not the type we are looking to bolster.

What positive features do these underused types possess?

Normal operates almost entirely outside the tangled web of checks and counters created by the type chart, and many normal types have good move pools. If we wanted to make a Pokemon versatile enough to counter an array of dominant types and support some lackluster ones without belonging to any of them, Normal would surely be the way to go.

What existing Pokémon individually affect the usage of entire types?

There are so many ways to approach this question, I'm not sure which to pick. Many pokemon with remarkable strengths sport 4x weaknesses that grant special niches to pokemon like Mamoswine and necessitate coverage moves on others. Magnezone has just the right tools to take care of all the bulky steel types in OU. Any one of the powerful dragons could be said to be the one that forces every team to have a steel type. Politoed brings a dizzying myriad of exploitable buffs to certain types, and to a lesser extent so do the other weather inducers. The list goes on and on.

What ways are there to change a typing’s usage outside of simply countering/being countered by them?

Weather support is a prime example. Offensive and defensive type synergy are both very helpful. Taxing the opposing pokemon's health upon entry just for being the wrong type is obviously effective at reducing those types' usage. Even just introducing a new type combination can change the dynamics between types.

I think it would be a good idea to look at both the intrinsic and meta-specific reasons that the most and least common types are good or bad.

Water

Strong: Everyone wants to say Water is strong because of rain, but I would says it's strongER because of rain. First, let's look at the intrinsic "good" parts of Water. It resists Water, Fire and Ice, and is weak to Grass and Electric. Water is a common type largely due to rain and Scald, Fire is common because it's one of the types that is super-effective against Steel (whom we'll address in bit) and a commonly abused Sun type, and Ice is the easiest type to carry to murder Dragons. Resisting all three of those in one type is a very useful boon. In addition, offensively Water types always have decent Water-type moves, usually at least Surf and Scald; they also almost universally have access to Ice-type moves, which as we described are useful for killing Dragons. Water's also not a bad offensive type, as it's effective against Ground, Rock and Fire, the first of which is very common and very good, and while Rock's not a common type for OU Pokemon to have, it's a still a good one to be able to hurt. They also benefit from being the singly most common type in the game, so we have a simply larger pool to choose from.

Weak: Speaking defensively, I already mentioned Water's weaknesses. Grass is such a mediocre resistance. It's not a great offensive type for coverage, and is often carried for either powerful STAB (see Breloom) or specifically to hit Water-types (see anything that had Grass Knot in DPPt). Electric, on the other hand, is a useful type, hitting the common Water and Flying types hard and Steel not inherently resisting it. It's the type one usually sees to try to murder Waters. On the offensive side, Water types have honestly few weaknesses. As I said before, having even just Water and Ice moves for coverage is great, and many have even better offensive coverage. Plus, as we all know, rain helps it a lot by increasing resistance and making Surf, Scald and Hydro Pump hit harder.

Fighting:

Strong: Fighting's interesting because it's only so intrinsically strong; it's usually used because it has some star Pokemon, and because of it's usefulness against Steels. But let's look at its strengths. Defensively it's ... OK? It's weak to only Flying and Psychic, the former of which is nearly non-existent, and the latter of which is only carried by Psychic-types, which is arguably a bad type (while somewhat common). And it resists Rock (mostly good against the ever-present Stealth Rock), Dark (which is also almost non-existent), and Bug (only useful against U-turn). Offensively it's super-effective against Steel (the BIG one here), Rock (not super-great, there are only two Rock-types in OU, who only care about being Rock-type so much), Ice (again, somewhat common because it kills Dragons but only so inherently good), Normal (AGAIN, pretty uncommon) and Dark (one again, not too common). Now, what we must examine is whether or not these uncommon types are uncommon in spite of being to Fighting or because of it. Also, as we all know, many Pokemon have access to Fighting moves (namely Superpower and Focus Blast) to help with coverage, and use them to hit Steels that resist their main attacks. Fighting types also often have high Attack (and less often SpA) and either great bulk or more often decent Speed. They also nearly universally have access to both Bulk Up and Swords Dance, two great boosting moves.

Weak: First, the big issue is that Fighting types themselves often have limited movepools, and very low bulk. But these weaknesses aren't a big deal when the Fighting STAB removes the big resistance that most primary STABs hate (Steel) and the bulkiness issues aren't important when Fighting resists Stealth Rock and are often powerful and fast enough to break through at least several of the opponent's Pokemon. Maybe its big weakness, and the one easiest to capitalize on, is the sheer number of types that resist Fighting. We have Poison, Bug, Psychic and Flying, and Ghost is immune. Many of those are ... OK types, but Ghost, Bug and Flying are at least decent and often-used types with significant upsides.

Dragon

Strong: So put it simply, Dragon is a good type. It has only two weaknesses while having four great resistances. Its STAB has several powerful moves that nearly all Dragon-types have access to, and while only being super-effective against Dragon, it's also only resisted by Steel. They usually have somewhat diverse movepools, and also good offensive stats. I don't feel I need to sing it's praises, they're very straightforward. Also, Dragon-types can be used in and against any weather (especially Rain and Sun), with their offensive prowess useful fro any team, and resistances useful no matter whether Hydro Pumps or Giga Drains or Fire Blasts or Thunder is used against you.

Weak: Elephant in the room: Ice. Ice murders Dragons and many common Water types (and other Pokemon) carry it. I think we could easily argue Dragon is the type the meta is currently shaped around. Look how many attackers carry HP Ice or Ice Punch just to hit Dragons hard. But it has so few intrinsic weaknesses. Some are fast, most bulky, many have strong attacking stats, good movepools, and even bad secondary types are salvageable with Dragon. Countering this could be the most interesting part of this CAP.

Steel

Strong: SO MANY RESISTANCES. But no seriously, the game is also largely shaped around Steel's resistances. STABs are "bad" because they're resisted by it hand have no good way to handle it, Pokemon carry Superpower/Focus Blast/Flamethrower/Earthquake just to kill Steels. There's not much to says about their good defensive side. Also, they resist Stealth Rock! Offensively ... it's a little worse. They're only good against Ice and Rock types, but those aren't too common (or good, really). The main moves we see from Steel are Bullet Punch (not used often) or Gyro Ball (only used by those slow steel walls who get it).

Weak: Steel is weak to Fighting, Ground and Fire, and doesn't resist Water and Electric. Now, most of these are prominent types, but are they prominent because of hitting Steel hard, or in spite of it? They also often have mediocre if not bad offensive stats, and pretty mediocre coverage.

While there are many interesting ideas in the previous pieces of discussion, I think we should focus ourselves not only on the "what do we want to have decreased usage"part of the concept, but also on the aspect of "what do we want to have more usage". While "nerfing" a type is arguably not excessively hard (introducing a new strong resistance, or a strong attacker with a SE STAB against that type, you name it - probably there are also other good and relatively easy to implement ideas), changing the metagame to achieve a bigger usage on some lower used types is in my opinion the bigger challenge, depending on what type we choose. For example, some types may be inherently bad, and thus trying to raise the usage of such types is almost an unfesible task if we want the pokemon to have an impact on a strong type at the same time (an example could be Rock; it's hit super effectively by three of the four "strongest" types, while being also murdered by Ground and Grass; I really can't see much room to raise such a type in the current metagame, especially if we don't want to obtain a uber-high BST poke like in CAP4); other ones are heavily hampered to the predominance of another type while also having inherent flaws (Fire, for example: Water-type predominance obviously hurts a lot, but that SR weakness is not helping either). So I think that reflecting on what type could be feasibly "boosted" in the current meta is as important, if not more, than to discuss what we like to gimp a bit.

I won't reiterate the Types' qualities since other members above did a good job of that. I'll just say that I find it important to figure out who exactly we want to decrease in usage - all 4 of the top types seems unfeasible to me.

That said, I can picture ways to bring down ANY 3 out of the 4 types (Water+Dragon+Steel / Water+Dragon+Fighting / Water+Steel+Fighting / Dragon+Steel+Fighting). It's a matter of dedicated effort throughout type, ability, STATS (big one to counter Dragons for sure) and movepoll, but it CAN be done.

In terms of what Types on CAP 5 would be suitable for the job, I think nyttyn's onto something when pointing towards Grass (although that's too uncommon really). Corkscrew's idea to use an Ice type to destroy Dragons and possibly give hail a leg up on rain is another one I'd support, I think it's very workable. And of course we cannot underestimate Normal - it's underrepresented, but I honestly believe this type has incredible potential and this is one CAP concept that's very inviting of that type (as was Mollux, admittedly, though we ended up not going that route).

Think outside the box guys. We have two types total we can use, and an immunity ability if necessary - between that and the right stats we can really get the job done. It's another question altogether when it comes to choosing 'which types to raise'... and I have an inkling that THAT'd need to wait until we at least have Typing decided to not speak in the void. If we can agree on which main types to bring down, that'll be already pretty good (although, if given enough time, hmmm).

I'm aware nyttyn already did something similar, but I wanted something more exhaustive. I know that there is more to this concept that simply knowing the exact number of percentages of certain types in OU, but I'm hoping this could be of help somehow.

Using the latest usage ratings (January 2013) found here, we can quantitatvely assess which types underused and which are overused. Simply counting the number of Pokemon of each type that belongs in OU would give us the following data:

There are 10 Water-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 10 Psychic-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 9 Steel-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 9 Flying-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 9 Ground-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 7 Fighting-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 6 Dragon-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 4 Grass-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 4 Fire-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 4 Electric-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 4 Poison-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 3 Bug-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 3 Ice-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 2 Rock-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 2 Dark-type Pokemon in OU.

There are 2 Ghost-type Pokemon in OU.

There is 1 Normal-type Pokemon in OU.

Click to expand...

However, I feel that just doing so would be inaccurate in that it is not trully indicative of how common that particular type is. For example, although there are only 6 Dragon-types in OU, most of them receive high usage, and are thus encountered more. So what I did next was to get the usage % of each Pokemon in OU (from Scizor to Haxorus), and added up the usage % for each type. Then the %share of each were calculated, and we get the following data:

Steel-type Pokemon appear 12.74% of the time in opponent's team.

Water-type Pokemon appear 11.56% of the time in opponent's team.

Psychic-type Pokemon appear 10.03% of the time in opponent's team.

Flying-type Pokemon appear 9.42% of the time in opponent's team.

Dragon-type Pokemon appear 8.42% of the time in opponent's team.

Ground-type Pokemon appear 7.43% of the time in opponent's team.

Fighting-type Pokemon appear 7.13% of the time in opponent's team.

Grass-type Pokemon appear 5.38% of the time in opponent's team.

Bug-type Pokemon appear 4.87% of the time in opponent's team.

Fire-type Pokemon appear 4.78% of the time in opponent's team.

Electric-type Pokemon appear 4.11% of the time in opponent's team.

Poison-type Pokemon appear 3.85% of the time in opponent's team.

Rock-type Pokemon appear 3.12% of the time in opponent's team.

Ice-type Pokemon appear 2.3% of the time in opponent's team.

Dark-type Pokemon appear 2.19% of the time in opponent's team.

Ghost-type Pokemon appear 2.03% of the time in opponent's team.

Normal-type Pokemon appear 0.64% of the time in opponent's team.

Click to expand...

As one can see, althogh there are some differences in the two list above, the top and bottom types are the same. Thus, with this alone, I'd say CAP5 should aim to increase the usage of Normal, Ghost and Dark types and decrease the usage of Steel, Water and Psychic types.

While I think zyrefredric has some very interesting stats (in fact, the same one I was writing a post on >>), I think trying to target the top 3 and the bottom 3 all at once is perhaps going to be spreading CaP5 too far, though certain interactions in that list are interesting: Ghosts and (especially) Darks both beat Psychic, which you've targetted as a top type. Ghosts also beat Fighting, which I think is a very useful preposition.

I might like to hear some more comments on that, as it's an interesting point, given that fighting is a member of the four big types everyone is very focused on.

Everyone doing their "math" (which is sketchy at best in the first place) is making at least a crucial mistake or two. In zyre's case, multiply by 6. There are 6 team slots. This does nothing to change relative percentages, but it does show the magnitude of the problem.

There is a 76.44% chance of a Steel on the opponent's team.
There is a 69.36% chance of a Water on the opponent's team.

I'll take a look at the stats later and see if there's anything more accurate I can parse out. The math done here so far has been flawed. In my very limited time this week, I can't imagine I have the capacity to find anything better. But these simple additions and divisions do NOT work.

In terms of types the project might attempt to raise the prominence of, Fire strikes me as an interesting one, the reason being that many of Fire's shortcomings appear to be intrinsic to the metagame rather than the type itself.

It has only three weaknesses, but they are killers in the current metagame - Ground leaves it vulnerable to the ubiquitous Earthquake, Rock hits it with that painful Stealth Rocks weakness, and Water gives it serious issues with Drizzle teams, as well as the prevalence of bulky Water types (Reshiram is the only Fire type in the game to be neutral to water!). In terms of what resists it, we have Dragon, Fire, Rock and Water - Dragon and Water being, again, huge forces in the current metagame.

It's not without its saving graces - hitting Steel types super effectively is always valuable, and in combination with Dragon it offers nearly perfect neutral coverage (100% with Mold Breaker or similar), freeing up two valuable moveslots. It resists popular Ice-type coverage moves as well as both of Scizor's STABs (well, come to think of it it completely murders Scizor, and Ferrothorn to boot). Furthermore, Fire type Pokemon can't be burned, which helps physical sweepers immeasurably. Finally, Fire is blessed with its own auto-weather option in Drought, which makes it a potentially deadly threat.

In terms of raising the usage of the type, there are a few clear threats that would have to be addressed - namely, as mentioned, Stealth Rocks and Drizzle. There would also be a more positive approach to take - a more prominent Drought would be an encouraging force.

To raise the usage of Fire and take Water down a peg strikes me as an achievable goal, at least to some extent. Say we introduced a quality Chlorophyll sweeper - we would already be threatening the presence of Water types, encouraging the use of Drought and baiting Fire type counters. A reliable spinner or magic bouncer would be another option, to get rid of those pesky Stealth Rocks (I personally believe that SR is the only thing keeping Volcarona out of Ubers). There are likely many other paths that could be taken too. But yeah. For your consideration, the Fire type.

Moderator

Looking at the January stats is going to be a really flawed approach to this problem, not just because people are really bad at statistical analysis, but also because the January stats include some of the Tornadus Therian metagame.

I find that abilities tend to have a huge role in the representation of some of the types in OU. Psychic, for example, has Alakazam, Reuniclus, Espeon, Deoxys, etc. Conversely, there are typings with less representation than one might expect because of the lack of specific traits in existing Pokemon. Flying, for example, was strongly represented by Tornadus Therian because of Regenerator and Hurricane, but a lot of Flying-types don't have Hurricane and/or are really bad. I've heard people referring to the Flying type as a "sleeper threat" before. Not that I think Flying is necessarily a good type for this, considering we already did Tomohawk and we've already seen Tornadus Therian. My point is merely that this is the kind of thing that we could be looking at.

Something to keep in mind: While typing is certainly a very large factor in a Pokemon's viability, it's far from everything. Kyurem's formes are an excellent example of this. We can say that Dragon / Ice is a horrible typing all we want, but a comparison of Black Kyurem and White Kyurem makes it hard to justify using it as an excuse for Black Kyurem being solidly OU at this point, while a very similar alternate forme is Uber.